Curated category
American Nobel laureates
- Albert EinsteinWhen Albert Einstein was five and sick in bed, his father brought him a compass. The trembling needle, always pointing the same way, convinced the boy that…
- Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a family where his mother kept his hair long and dressed him in frilly…
- Barack ObamaBarack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, making him the only person to become…
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient…
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest on the 14th of October 1912, while on his way to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee.
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner spent most of his writing life within a few square miles of Lafayette County, Mississippi, yet the fictional world he built from that patch…
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a local produce market to survive. During the Great Depression, he and his first wife lived on fish and crabs he…
- Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter was born on the 1st of October 1924, in the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia, where his mother worked as a registered nurse.
- Robert Lucas Jr.Robert Emerson Lucas Jr. was born on the 15th of September 1937 in Yakima, Washington, the eldest child of a family that ran an ice creamery.
- Al GoreAl Gore won more votes than his opponent on Election Day 2000, yet still lost the presidency. That outcome, decided by a Supreme Court ruling of 5-4 in Bush…
- Saul BellowSaul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows on the 10th of June, 1915, in Lachine, Quebec, to parents who had fled Saint Petersburg two years earlier, carrying with…
- Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson was three years old when he heard a man outside the Augusta parsonage announce in disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected and that a war…
- Eugene O'NeillEugene O'Neill died the same way he was born: in a hotel room. As he whispered his last words at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston on the 27th of November 1953…
- Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger arrived in New York City on the 5th of September, 1938, a 15-year-old Jewish refugee who had fled Germany with his family just weeks before.
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz grew up in Gary, Indiana, a steel town whose economic fortunes would later give shape to many of the questions he spent a career trying to…
- George AkerlofGeorge Akerlof walked into a used car lot and saw the entire economy differently. The year was 1970, and the article he published that year, "The Market for…
- Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman died on the 16th of November 2006, and his last column ran in The Wall Street Journal the very next day.
- Esther DufloEsther Duflo was born on the 25th of October 1972 in Paris, and by the age of 46 she had become the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in…
- Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman grew up in Merrick, a hamlet on Long Island, and traces his interest in economics not to a professor or a recession, but to science fiction.
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson stood at a lectern in a University of Chicago classroom on the 2nd of January, 1932, and later said that was the exact moment he was born as…
- James TobinJames Tobin was born on the 5th of March, 1918, in Champaign, Illinois, the son of a journalist credited with inventing "Homecoming" at the University of…
- Angus DeatonAngus Deaton was born on the 19th of October 1945 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he grew up to become one of the economists whose work most fundamentally…
- Carl WiemanCarl Wieman grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, in a family with an unusual range of intellectual passions. His paternal grandfather, Henry Nelson Wieman, was a…
- Eric Allin CornellEric Allin Cornell was born on the 19th of December, 1961, in Palo Alto, California, to parents who were finishing graduate degrees at Stanford University.
- Eugene WignerEugene Paul Wigner once quipped that he never expected to see his name in the newspapers "without doing something wicked" - yet in 1963, the Nobel Committee…
- Herbert A. SimonHerbert Alexander Simon was born on the 15th of June 1916 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of an electrical engineer who had crossed the Atlantic from…
- Daniel KahnemanDaniel Kahneman was born on the 5th of March, 1934, in Tel Aviv, while it was still the British Mandate of Palestine. He would go on to win the Nobel…
- James M. BuchananJames McGill Buchanan Jr. was born on the 3rd of October 1919 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in a farmhouse with no indoor plumbing and no electricity.
- Oliver Hart (economist)Oliver Hart walked into a courtroom not to give testimony about a crime, but to explain what it means to truly own something.
- Franco ModiglianiFranco Modigliani was born on the 18th of June 1918 in Rome, into a Jewish family headed by a pediatrician father. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in…
- Gary BeckerGary Stanley Becker was born on the 2nd of December 1930 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and by the time he died in Chicago on the 3rd of May 2014, he had done…
- James HeckmanJames Joseph Heckman was born on the 19th of April 1944, and he would go on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000 for a statistical…
- Richard ThalerRichard H. Thaler walked onto the set of a Hollywood film in 2015 and, alongside pop star Selena Gomez, explained to moviegoers why people make terrible…
- Elinor OstromElinor Ostrom was born in Los Angeles in 1933, and she died on the 12th of June 2012, the same day her last article was published.
- Lawrence KleinLawrence Robert Klein was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on the 14th of September 1920, and he would go on to reshape how governments and central banks understand…
- Claudia GoldinClaudia Dale Goldin was born in the Bronx, New York City on the 14th of May 1946. Her father Leon Goldin worked as a data processing manager at Burlington…
- Robert J. ShillerRobert James Shiller was born on the 29th of March, 1946, in Detroit, Michigan, and he would grow up to be one of the few economists who actually warned the…
- Joel MokyrJoel Mokyr was born on the 26th of July 1946 in Leiden, Netherlands, into a family of Dutch Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
- Linus PaulingLinus Carl Pauling stands alone in the history of Nobel Prizes. He is the only person ever to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, one for Chemistry…
- Nicholas Murray ButlerNicholas Murray Butler ran Columbia University for 43 years, the longest presidency in that institution's history. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.